Re: Trump's "Domestic Terrorism" Executive Order

"Only a fool lets somebody else tell him who his enemy is."
   —Assata Shakur (July 16, 1947 - September 25, 2025)

UFW Boycott

Don't buy Windmill Farms mushrooms. Period.

'Nuf Said

Why read Jordan Peterson when Camille Paglia is right there? Tired of male misogynists being promoted over more qualified female misogynists

— Natalie Wynn (@ContraPoints) July 19, 2022

I have never understood the interest in either. I remember reading Paglia in a Harper's panel discussion on deconstruction. She had no idea what she was talking about. It was all (I suspect) recycled cocktail party chatter. And I'm not even sure what Peterson is recycling. Effluent of some sort.

Not the Best Day at Work

...so I am only somewhat ironically listening to Jeffrey Holmes's May the Bridges I Burn Light My Way.

Happy Holidays!

...and remember to listen to those ghosts.

I feel like this holiday season, it's important to remind people of the true meaning of christmas: ghosts terrorizing rich people in the middle of the night until they agree to pay their employees more

— Dana Schwartz (@DanaSchwartzzz) December 19, 2019

Just Another Day in Trump World

The seating capacity at Williams Arena is 8,000. https://t.co/Dlt4oEBj6V

— Caitlin Byrd (@MaryCaitlinByrd) July 18, 2019

Stay Focused on the Essentials

"Fire bad. Tree pretty."
   — Buffy, "Graduation Day, Part II"

The Right to Starve

Kentucky, making Dickens non-fiction.

How long until someone runs on the platform of #FoodStampsForAll ?
If healthcare is a right, is food as well?

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) November 29, 2018

It Already Happened Here

See the short documentary hosted by the Atlantic about the German American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939. Notice the image of George Washington flanked by swastikas as the backdrop on the stage.

Lest we forget, both Henry Ford and Henry Luce (the founder of Time and Life) were both great fans of Hitler in the 30s.

Go with the Flow

This afternoon's soundtrack is jazz inflected j-pop from School Food Punishment. Yet another group (like The Housemartins) I found out about after they broke up. I may be counting it wrong, but I think that parts of "Flow" are in 5.

Prelude No. 2, Kjell Marcussen

What I'm listening to today:


Score for this and the other eleven preludes in the set is here.

Immortality

... of a tenuous, minor, sort. I'm mentioned in a footnote in Seth Michael Perlow's doctoral dissertation:

70 I am grateful to Charles O. Hartman for his email correspondence about DIASTEXT and to Ron Starr for making an online engine for diastic reading, along with a description of the process, which have disappeared since the time of writing. Hartman discusses his programs for computer poetry in Virtual Muse (1996).

Heavy Metal in Hijabs

From Indonesia, Voice of Baceprot, playing "The Enemy of Earth is You."

More on the band from Reuters.

And, finally, "Hysteria."

Bullies & Destruction

“You can’t beat a bully at his own games. And I’m not talking about one particular bully here; it’s energy. You have to out-create the destruction—it’s the only way.”
—Tori Amos

Poet John Ashbery Dies Age 90

They Dream Only of America
John Ashbery

They dream only of America
To be lost among the thirteen million pillars of grass:
“This honey is delicious
Though it burns the throat.”

And hiding from darkness in barns
They can be grownups now
And the murderer’s ash tray is more easily–
The lake a lilac cube.

He holds a key in his right hand.
“Please,” he asked willingly.
He is thirty years old.
That was before

We could drive hundreds of miles
At night through dandelions.
When his headache grew worse we
Stopped at a wire filling station.

Now he cared only about signs.
Was the cigar a sign?
And what about the key?
He went slowly into the bedroom.

“I would not have broken my leg if I had not fallen
Against the living room table. What is it to be back
Beside the bed? There is nothing to do
For our liberation, except wait in the horror of it.

And I am lost without you.”

Obituary in The Guardian.

Shorter Donald Trump

"Afghanistan is Dari for Vietnam."

Syllabics

Extended and interesting discussion of syllabic poetry in Poetry Daily's Prose Feature this week. I had always heard it dismissed as being inconsistent with the accentual structure of English. And any successes with it attributed to accident. But the article points to many more examples than Marianne Moore. And it's interesting to see it as a route several poets followed to get to free verse.

Thank You, Mike Leach

A big shout-out to Mike Leach, Washington State University head coach, who gave personal testimony in Lynden on May 7 about the tragic effects of concussions in collegiate football.

In C

There are lots of versions of Terry Riley's In C. Earlier this week I was listening to the Bang on a Can recording. But tonight I found my favorite, recorded in Mali, using Western and African instruments. It's on Spotify, if you subscribe, and on YouTube.

My introduction to Riley's music was A Rainbow in Curved Air whose title delights me.